The Lost Soldier offers a perspective on World War II we don’t always get from histories and memoirs. Based on the letters home of Pete Lynn, the diary of his wife, Ruth, and meticulous research in primary and secondary sources, this book recounts the war of a married couple who represent so many married couples, so many soldiers, in World War II. The book tells the story of this couple, starting with their life in North Carolina and recounting how the war increasingly insinuated itself into the fabric of their lives, until Pete Lynn was drafted, after which the war became the essential fact of their life. Author Chris J. Hartley intricately weaves together all threads—soldier and wife, home front and army life, combat, love and loss, individual and army division—into an intimate, engaging narrative that is at once gripping military history and engaging social history.

The Lost Soldier: The Ordeal of a World War II GI from the Home Front to the Hürtgen Forest

Biographies & Memoirs

Chris J. Hartley

Community & Culture

Stackpole Books

Winner of the 2011 Willie Parker Peace Prize from the N.C. Society of Historians, and Finalist for the Ben Franklin Award in History. In the spring of 1865, Federal major general George Stoneman launched a cavalry raid deep into the heart of the Confederacy. Over the next two months, Stoneman's cavalry rode across six Southern states, fighting fierce skirmishes and destroying supplies and facilities. When the raid finally ended, Stoneman's troopers had brought the Civil War home to dozens of communities that had not seen it up close before. In the process, the cavalrymen pulled off one of the longest cavalry raids in U.S. military history. Despite its geographic scope, Stoneman's 1865 raid failed in its primary goal of helping to end the war. Instead, the destruction the raiders left behind slowed postwar recovery in the areas it touched. In their wake, the raiders left a legacy that resonates to this day, even in modern popular music such as The Band's ''The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.'' Based on exhaustive research in 34 repositories in 12 states and from more than 200 books and newspapers, Hartley's book tells the complete story of Stoneman's 1865 raid for the first time.

Stoneman's Raid, 1865

History

Americas

John F. Blair

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Books by Chris J. Hartley